


be my home (just for the day)

by pendules



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-05
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-31 15:05:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1033100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pendules/pseuds/pendules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry, Louis, Japan. <i>It's been a year, a year of acting like it's all good with them. Like nothing's changed. Like Harry didn't see those tweets and Louis doesn't really care what people say.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	be my home (just for the day)

Japan's good. Japan's always good but it's even better this time because Harry really needs it now. Because Japan feels like another planet where he can be someone else, where he can be swallowed up in a city of nine million people, where he can be another anonymous face in the crowd if he wants to be, maybe. And it's normal, he supposes, to want that - after two tours, three years, his entire life being blown wide open for everyone to see. But he's - it's not supposed to be like this for him. It's not what he's here for. They all have their role in this band and his is to show the world a happy face, to make everyone think that they're doing just fine. Which is hard on a good day, but now - now, nothing at all feels fine. Not with any of them. And especially not with him. Nothing's been fine for a long time.

*

They ask him another stupid, tactless question about going solo and he's polite and diplomatic about it, of course, _of course_ , because that's him, always. He's not allowed to be anyone else. He's weirdly quiet for the rest of the interview and the rest of the day and everyone notices. He doesn't care anymore though. It's too exhausting putting up this fucking front all the time.

Niall finds him curled up in a chair backstage after.

"Hey, don't bother with them -" he starts.

"How can I not though? When everyone just assumes that I'm already gone, that I don't even care -"

"Everyone knows how much you care," he insists, like it's bullshit, like it doesn't matter, because it's Niall and it's easy for him to think like that. "Everyone who matters anyway."

"Do they, though?" And they know exactly who he's referring to. Niall just sighs, defeated.

"You should talk to him -"

"Yeah, whatever," he says, standing up. "It's time to go on."

*

When they ask about Larry a few days after, Niall doesn't even bother to come to him.

*

So, it's good, getting out of Australia finally, escaping the questions and the heavy weight of it all - loneliness and homesickness and this strange, new dread that they're coming to a place where they won't be able to fix it anymore. That it'll be out of their hands. So, he laughs and watches Niall flirt with Katy and Louis catches his eyes, grinning, and it feels like maybe it can be okay again. They can be.

*

It's been a year, a year of acting like it's all good with them. Like nothing's changed. Like Harry didn't see those tweets and Louis doesn't really care what people say. It's almost funny enough to make him laugh sometimes, how all these people who were so eager to prove that they were together actually ended up driving them apart. Because it's not - it's not the same. They haven't really hung out in months and months. They used to spend half their time in each other's hotel rooms, just talking, the kind of conversations Harry's never had with anyone else, the kind of things you don't say to ordinary mates. Now, he's always off with Liam or smoking with Zayn in that fucking truck, and he doesn't begrudge them their relationship with him but it's just - with them, it was different, it was _special_.

*

"Harold, what's your favourite Japanese word?"

And maybe he's feeling it too, maybe he wants it back, wants them back, wants it be normal again. Maybe he's tired - of the resentment, of the coldness, of the gaping chasm between them. Maybe he's ready to cross it.

"I think you know what's coming, Louis."

*

They get back to their rooms at the same time and maybe he'd just say goodnight, like they have a hundred times before, but part of him wants to ask him to watch a movie or something, order room service, do what they used to do almost every night. But that was back when they were away from home for the longest time they'd ever been and they felt like they didn't have anything else, anyone else, but it was enough, _they_ were enough. They do have other things now, they're other people now, but sometimes Harry thinks he'd give it up, all he's done in the last two years, if he could just have Louis back, his Louis, who wasn't afraid of anything except the quiet things he'd tell Harry late at night. Harry wants it - just that, just wants him to talk to him again, tell him what's wrong even though he can't fix it. (He wants other things too, so many things, but he's resigned himself to never, ever consciously thinking about them, never daring to hope.)

"Hey, we should hang out sometime before we go back home," he says, casual, innocent.

"Yeah, okay," Louis says, and it sounds like a promise, it sounds a bit like his old Louis again.

"Night, Lou."

"Night, Harry," he says, so cautious and gentle.

*

They're sitting at a bar and they're all alone somehow even though Harry was sure he'd invite Zayn or something or that Niall would tag along at the prospect of free alcohol. And he hasn't had a chance like this in so long and it just comes out.

"I miss this, you know," and Louis visibly tenses up, because it's the first time he's acknowledged it out loud.

"What do you mean?"

"I just -" He sighs. "I miss _you_."

Louis laughs slightly nervously. "I'm right here."

"But you haven't been, have you?" he says, looking at him morosely.

"Harry, I -"

"It's okay. I get it. We don't have to talk about it right now." He takes a sip and wonders if he's maybe ruined it all again, eyes prickling with unshed tears.

*

"Can I come in?" he asks, when they're back at Harry's room and he's surprised, but says, "Okay," and holds the door open for him.

It's so wrong how weird it is now, Louis in his room, sitting on the edge of his bed, looking like he doesn't belong there. Harry remembers both of them sleeping in his tiny bed at home, limbs all entangled, and has to will the tears away again.

"I don't - I don't know what you _want_ , Harry," he starts, uselessly

"I just - I just want you to be _here_." And it's stupid and he probably sounds like a whiny child but it's Louis, it's Louis who's seen him at his best and worst. Who stayed through all of it. Until he didn't.

"How am I supposed to know if you don't _tell_ me? If you shut everyone out and just want to be alone?"

"I want to be alone sometimes, Louis, but not all the time. I just - you're supposed to know when I need you, like you used to know."

"Harry, I don't know how to do that anymore. Because I don't know _you_ anymore."

"That's not fair, Louis." Because he's never left Louis behind before, never even thought about it, because Louis left him out in the cold first. And that's the only reason he's like this now.

"It's not? You didn't go off and make a bunch of new best mates?"

"Louis, this isn't about that."

"What's it about then? "

"It's about you being too scared to fight for us." And they've come to it at last.

"Harry, what -"

"You let them fuck us up, Louis," and it comes out more like a sob than an accusation. "When it was supposed to be the one thing that was _ours_ , that was safe from them."

"You think that's what happened to us?" he says, sounding wounded.

"I know it is."

"You think that I was scared that they'd think I was in love with you?" 

And the tears are finally flowing freely and it's such a relief. After all that time pretending to be okay, it's almost liberating.

"Weren't you?"

And he's shaking his head and this is the only denial that feels like the truth. 

"It wasn't ever because of that, Harry. I was scared that it was _true_."

"Louis -"

"Do you know what it's like having thousands of people shouting the greatest feeling you've ever had but never said to the entire world?" He laughs a little under his breath but he looks _terrified_. 

" _Louis_ ," he says again like he's being strangled, like he can't breathe and that's the only word he can manage to say. Because of course he knows. Of course. 

He sits down next to him, thighs and knees pressed together and he can't remember the last time they were so close. He takes his hand and says softly, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I didn't know if it was real or just - I didn't want to mess this up."

"But you messed it up anyway," and he's not sure if what he's feeling is his heart breaking or finally beginning to mend.

"I know, I know, I'm so sorry, Harry," and when he looks up, his eyes are wet too, the turquoise shining even brighter than usual. 

"It's okay, it's okay," he says wrapping his arms around his smaller frame and lets him cry against his chest.

*

When he wakes up, Louis is still clinging to him in his sleep like he's afraid he'll leave in the night and not come back. Harry just presses a soft kiss to his forehead and doesn't move except to hold him tighter. He wonders how they came to this. How they've barely spoken in a year and now they're halfway across the world from home with all these new confessions between them and the tour's over in two days and he doesn't know what's going to happen next. If maybe it was all just a dream, just the alcohol and too many emotions flying around after being bottled up for so long, if they'll just go back to what they were before. Somewhere between friends and strangers and bandmates and two people who used to be the closest to each other in the world.

Or - _or_. Harry doesn't see how it could possibly work. It's not a good idea, it's never been a good idea, even back on X Factor when Harry would entertain notions of kissing him in the kitchen over scrambled eggs or when they were lying side by side on the bottom bunk with Niall singing Irish songs above them or backstage after they were dubbed the next big boyband. It's more important, has always been - the band and their friendship. There isn't much of the latter left now though and although none of them will admit it, it's been eating away at the fabric of the band. It's all been off and wrong and so not _them_. And that's still what matters the most to him, no matter what people think. He knows it's the same for Louis too. That's one of the only things he's sure about now.

*

Louis wakes up and doesn't say much, just goes back to his room to shower and change. They meet the other guys for breakfast and Niall and Zayn are talking excitedly about costumes or something and fuck, he totally forgot that they're supposed to go out tonight. He just looks across at Louis who isn't looking at anyone at all. It'll be weird if Louis doesn't. Louis loves Halloween and he and Zayn like putting on makeup and having makeup fights and leaving it all over their own clothes and other people's clothes. He remembers Louis drunkenly whispering in his ear last year, arm warm where it was wrapped around his waist, leaving white powder in his hair. He puts his fork down. Zayn's just made a joke about Liam going as Becks and he's actually looking like he's considering it.

"Who are you going as, Haz?" Niall asks.

"It's a surprise," he says, just to get him to stop asking.

*

It's really just to make Louis smile because he knows it will. Because he's sick of it. Sick of pretending not to care. Sick of refraining from crossing the stage to tell him a joke about a dirty sign in the audience. Sick of not spending time with him just walking through foreign cities like they would always talk about doing at the beginning, like they were _supposed_ to do together. Sick of them not being there for each other when it's too much and the loneliness threatens to destroy them.

Louis laughs so hard that they can probably hear him ten floors down. 

"I think you need to stop," he says seriously.

"I can't stop," he says, shrugging, and maybe it means something else. Maybe it means, _I'm not going to give up on us._

"I love you," Louis says, like he can't help it, like it's too much, like it's been forcing its way out of his skin.

Harry smiles so bright it's almost like he's not standing in a hotel hallway in Japan wearing nothing but nude spandex shorts. It feels like home. It feels like the boy he's loved for three years finally coming back to him.

"Come here and kiss me, please," he says, because he feels like he might actually die if he has to wait a second more.

He gets makeup all over his face and hair but Harry doesn't care. When he pulls away, Harry keeps holding on to him, says, "I love you, I love you, I love you," into this skin because it's been way, way, way too long.

*

"What are we going to do now?" The tour is over but Harry doesn't want to leave, doesn't want to leave this room, and this bed, and this Louis who spent the last two days trying to make it up to him although he knows just having him here and now is enough for Harry, it's always been enough.

"I think you should come home with me. And then never leave," Louis says, kissing his neck.

"Okay," Harry says, because maybe it could be that simple. Maybe it's really always been that simple.


End file.
